I blinked my eyes open. The inhalation hadn’t come from Ruby—but
from a man. Hope cut through my pain. I scrambled onto the desk, forgetting
about the cut on my side, and leaned my head and shoulders through the
window.
Ruby lay below. No blood stained the rocky ground. Her head hadn’t
broken. And she wasn’t alone. Her small form was curled in Lucky’s arms.
“Hey!” I yelled.
Lucky lifted his head. His face was sheet-white and twisted in pain, but he
gave me a thin smile when he saw me.
Something rocked the house. My first thought was that we’d been struck
by an earthquake. I scrambled off the desk and crouched on the floor as
tremors moved through the building, shaking the walls and sending plaster
dust pouring over me. Then the sensation passed as suddenly as it had started,
and I pulled in a hacking, coughing breath.
The house felt different somehow. A shadow had been lifted away from
it.
I’d dropped the phone on the floor when I’d reached for Ruby. I picked it
up. This time, when I dialled the emergency helpline, I was greeted by a woman instead of static. I could have cried.
Ambulances and police always took too long to arrive at Marwick House.
I wanted to curl into a ball on the blue room’s carpet while I waited for them,
but the need to be close to my friends outweighed it. I took a moment to
fortify my mind then limped along the hall, down the stairs, through the open
front door, and along the side of the house.
“Hey.” Lucky sat where I’d last seen him, his too-long legs stretched out
at an awkward angle and with Ruby held in his arms. He nodded in greeting
as I rounded the side of the house. “You’re hurt.”
“I’ll live. What about you?”
“Fractured ribs, maybe. She’s heavier than she looks. But it could have
been worse.”
I crumpled to my knees beside him. Ruby wasn’t moving. Her face was
slack, and her body limp. I reached out to touch her arm.
“She’s got a pulse,” Lucky said. I noticed he was holding her very
carefully as he tried not to move her neck.
“What happened?” I sat back beside him and pressed my hands to the
jacket. It was sticky with blood.
“That’s what I was going to ask you.”
“No, I mean, how come you’re here?”
“You called me, remember?” His voice was thin with pain, but he
managed a smile. “You hung up before I could get to the phone and then
wouldn’t answer when I called you back. So I figured something had gone
screwy. I got here, you weren’t home, Ruby wouldn’t answer when I
knocked, and the door was locked. I came around the back to see if I could
get in that way. Saw Ruby in the window.” He shifted his shoulder and
flinched. “Figured I may as well get in the way of her fall.”
“Hah.” I leaned my head against my knee and briefly told him what had
happened. He only looked moderately dubious .
“So… assuming all of this is real and you weren’t hallucinating…”
“It is, and I wasn’t.”
“I’ll verify that later. But if that’s true, are we at any risk here? We’re on
Marwick ground.”
“True.” I glanced up at the house. The lichen and vines still coated its
stone, but they didn’t seem to hold the sinister portent that they usually did.
“But I think Shreya’s gone. I think we completed her loop.”
“Huh?”“Remember what Henry said? Ghosts have loops. Motions they repeat. If
you can find a way to break them—to ruin the loop—the ghost disappears.”
I lifted a hand to the window then let it flop back into my lap. “Shreya’s
loop was her suicide. She wanted Ruby to repeat it, so that she could have
Ruby—and Ruby’s baby—for herself. But you broke it. You caught her, just
like Shreya should have been caught all of those years ago. Boom. Unfinished
business finished.”
“Boom,” he echoed then coughed. Blood appeared on his lips.
The sunrise broke in earnest, and the first rays of golden light hit
Marwick House’s roof. I turned towards the street, thinking I heard sirens in
the distance. About time.